


Erravi

by SergeantPixie



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Oliver is a moody dick, angst because what else do I write seriously?, but we love him anyway, siblings are my weakness, we were all expecting this lbr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SergeantPixie/pseuds/SergeantPixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver doesn't know how to share his burdens. 1x02</p>
            </blockquote>





	Erravi

**Author's Note:**

> Siblings get to me okay. I imagine this as part of their exchange in front of the gravestones.

_Erravi: Latin; I am lost._

_"Some things you can't go back to, some things need left alone_  
 _Don't mess with the memories of a life passed on_  
 _Oh the tumbling reservations at the heart of my mistakes_  
 _Oh some things you can't go back to 'cause you let them slip away_

_I don't wanna be a witness to a path that's overgrown  
I don't wanna see this house not be a home…"_

_-Rosi Golan_

_"Can't Go Back"_

"Don't you get it, Ollie?" Thea asks, her voice raw and her eyes full of unshed tears, "we _buried_ you. You don't just come back from that."

You want to tell her that you understand, you want to reach out for her hands and assure that you know what it's like to bury the ones you love, because you have physically done the deed with stones and dirt and cold, dead bodies that used to be the people you love.

You want to tell her that you would be Ollie again if you could, but you don't know how to come back from the blood on your hands and the scars on your body. You are man stumbling through the dark, there is no one to lead you back into the light, and you are afraid that you will be stuck here in the dark, shivering and dreaming of the things that used to be. You are afraid you never got off the island at all.

You want to tell her that you are afraid to love because it feels too much like staring death in the face to you now, and the narrowing line between the two steal the air from your lungs and keeps you awake at night. When you stare death in the face you feel terrified, elated, alive, that feels too much like love to you, and that scares you more than anything else in the world. You do not want to be the man in love with death. You are scared that one day when you stare down death, it will wear your face.

You want to tell her that you might be turning into a monster, that your hands are stained red with blood, even if it is the blood of the guilty, blood is blood. You want to share your burden, and how _heavy_ the hood is. Above all, you want her to tell you that she still loves you, even if you are a changeling who came and stole her beloved brother away from her.

But how do you tell any of this to the girl you cradled in your arms when you were only a child and she was a newborn? How do you tell the girl who never let anyone else but you kiss her scraped knees, that the brother she knew is gone forever? How do you tell her that you watched your father shoot himself point blank in the head? How do you tell her about carrying stones to bury his body and how nothing had ever felt heavier in your life? How do you tell her about the feeling of hot metal tearing through your skin? How do you explain to your seventeen-year-old baby sister that you have killed and will kill again, all in your father's name?

The answer? You don't.

You just let her walk away.

Some burdens are yours alone. She is right; you can't go back.


End file.
